I bravely one day decided that the change was now, here at this very moment.  I knew it was not going to be a fun park ride like those ones we enjoyed with cousins and siblings when we were little.  But I knew it needed to happen.  I weighed the possible outcomes for a long time and it just never was worth it to take the leap.  I found myself being more scared of the part where I needed to find me, than the things I had to let go of.  Here I was, so far wandered into a place that I did not know anything about nut where I have used every skill of survival to keep on going.  I was feeling scared, scared of meeting me again.  I have forgotten who I was.  I knew certain things about myself, but I have forgotten who I really was.  You know that one person you met as a child, you knew them for this friendly face and knew they had some kindness because they always made you feel at home in some way, but then after years you see them again and don’t really remember the actual characteristics of this person, cause you have grown, they have aged and life is just not as simple as you thought it to be back when you were young. 

You have learned that things are never what they seem.  You have seen how bad things changed people with good behavior and good things changes people who had bad behavior.

This is who the unknown I was to myself.  I was scared to know what I have become.  I did not care what was going to change in my physical life if I took the leap.  I was scared to find out if I had been broken to the core.  To find out if I could find a way to heal those scars that were soaking in plain old dirty waters.  I was scared the blood flowing through the vanes of my soul was so mis formed that it could never again be the way that I wanted and believed it to be.

We have this idea that there will not be a cure, we will not heal.  This unknown infection has never been treated or seen so we self-diagnose and decide off hand by symptoms that it will be uncurable.

Some days seem better than others, so we carry on like this.  We get to days where we cannot take it anymore and feel like this is where it must end and others where we feel, this is not that bad.

I made the choice to make the conscious choice that even if it took me years the me, I knew was feeling crammed into that little box, still had the ultimate choice of making this change.  I was going to do it even if it was the last thing I did.  I was going to find the cure for the poison that made me forget that I mattered to.  I was my own infection and it needed to be stopped.  I was the one that kept choosing to get into the unclear non-clean water because dirty water seemed better than not swimming at all.

I read every little motivational note I could find.  I spoke positively into every second of every day.  A day again became a week, a week became a month and then when I realized six months had passed and I was so amazed at what had changed. 

I imagined that absolutely everything would have changed after months when I made the decisions.  I thought I would be soaring.  I was not.  I was at a low point financially.  I was trying to survive.  I found myself doubting the me the I, that went on a spree building new dreams.  Working on a new reality.

And this was okay.  It was part of the healing.  It was the journey to acceptance.  It was the price of time again I had to pay to find the cure.  And instead of letting go of the idea that this all would be worth it, I recalled my reasons, I went back to my why.  With every breath that became physically harder I had to dig a little deeper into that stranger I called me, to get through another day. 

I had to face the shortfalls.  I had to attend to every single wound one by one and take immaculate care of it.   I needed to take care of me.

It had felt at times that everyone has left me to deal with this on my own.  In a way the probably did.  And that was the better part of it even if it really did not feel that way.  But I was the specialist in the field of me.  How could I expect someone from a different trade to fix what they do not understand?  I had to do exact and clear problem assessment of every problem to its core.  I had to dive deep into the existence of everything that was making mee feel unsecure in being holistic.

With this it became a little better.  I met people like me.  People that liked to talk to me and I to them.  People that became interested in how I was holding up.  You know, those people that make you smile.  The people that make you realize it is not all that bad.  The ones that do not just say that this to will pass, but they make you believe that this is already in the progress of passing.

I held hands with souls that looked like mine.  Some of them was probably a blueprint of what I was going through.  They helped with some glue in parts where I ran out.  The helped lift some pieces that were way too heavy to pick up at the time.

I started building relationships again.  Like the ones I use to know.  The ones I use to treasure a very long time ago.  The people looked a little different from the outside.  But where just as cozy and soft on the inside as those I longed for.  They became more and more special to me and my existence was not to pretend to be happy with them, but I was just happy around them. 

The expectations were non-damaging.  The friendships were mutual.

I was on the road to healing.

 

-Melissa Smith